Monthly Archives: August 2011

We wrote here about Charles Koch’s elegant rejoinder to Warren Buffett’s very silly op-ed, in which Buffett requested that the federal government raise his taxes. The flaws in Buffett’s reasoning, and his epic hypocrisy, have been widely noted. Some of the main points can be summarized as follows: 1) Nothing prevents Buffett from contributing more money to the federal treasury, but, like every liberal I know of, he has chosen »

We once had the opportunity to spend some time with Dick and Lynne Cheney. It was a rare privilege. The private Cheney was pretty much the same as the public one: lucid, balanced, kind, his outlook informed by a lifetime of experience in public affairs. His memoir In My Time is about to hit the book stores, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon by following the link. I’m looking forward »

I’m not sure where the epicenter of the earthquake that “rocked” the East coast was, but Michael Ramirez locates the epicenter of excuses–the place where all the fault lines converge–at the White House: »

So I’ll try to file storm reports this weekend–including video, if I can (like my You Tubes on the various “Snowmageddons” we have here in the winter), but in the meantime, who knew that Charles Krauthammer had a Twitter feed: “Earthquake, hurricane, Obamacare. When does it stop? Seven more and I vote we let the Israelites go.” Meanwhile, the best source among our extended circle of friends for up-to-the-minute storm »

I’m very late coming to the scrum over Gov. Rick Perry’s very gamey comments about Fed chairman Ben Bernanke more than a week ago, which attracted fierce criticism from just about the entire political spectrum. But with Bernanke back above the fold of today’s news with his Jackson Hole comments that sent the market gyrating wildly once again (which may be the new normal?), it seems propitious to revisit one »

I wrote here about the hit piece on Congressman Darrell Issa by Eric Lichtblau that appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Lichtblau’s article, which sought to create the impression that Issa has misused his Congressional power to benefit his personal financial interests, was riddled with errors. In fact, as I noted at the time, “the Times’ attack on Issa consists of nothing but lies and fabrications, »

I guess I can understand why easterners freaked out about the earthquake the other day; they are sufficiently rare, and if you’ve never been through one before the sensation of the ground suddenly heaving, rattling windows and shaking buildings, will seem pretty unsettling. Having grown up in southern California and lived through several of the larger, sharper California quakes, this was a piddly little excuse for a temblor. I actually »

I believe that Deborah Solomon broke the story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. Here is the opening: The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking oil and gas companies to provide it with detailed information—including chemicals used and efforts to minimize environmental impact—about their use of a controversial drilling process used to crack open natural gas trapped in rocks. The federal government’s investor-and-markets watchdog is stepping into the heated environmental »

Jerry Leiber died on Monday at the age of 78. As a teenager, Leiber recruited Mike Stoller to compose the music for Leiber’s inventive lyrics. At the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, they injected their passion for rhythm & blues into the music. Leiber brought his own playful wit and fractured view of the universe to the stories he set to Stoller’s tunes. Among their earliest productions was “Hound Dog,” »

Social Security, not Medicare or Medicaid, is the crown jewel of the entitlement state. For several generations now, it has been sold to voters as a more or less sacred compact. Many Americans still believe that the federal government maintains an “account” in their name, which contains assets. Some even think that their “account” contains their own contributions, carefully set aside for their retirement by Franklin Roosevelt or his successors. »

I bumped into Tim Pawlenty on the street in downtown Minneapolis yesterday. It was a funny convergence: Pawlenty, walking with an older gentleman, approached a street corner at the same time as Mike Hatch, a former DFL Attorney General and Pawlenty’s bitter political opponent, also with another man; two lawyers who are long-time GOP activists; and me–coming from different directions. Pawlenty greeted me and the other Republicans briefly, then had »

Terry Jeffrey draws attention to Vice President Biden’s remarks at Sichuan University earlier this week in Chengdu, China. Biden’s remarks weren’t entirely terrible, but they were terribly embarrassing. They were unfocused and incoherent. If Biden were a Republican, well, we would have heard a bit more about them than we have. Among other things, Biden paid tribute to America’s economic prowess. According to Biden: “The United States is hardwired for »

What an ironic turn of events for the website that helped speed Dan Rather’s retirement from CBS to borrow the New York Times‘ infamous rationalization that a document was “fake but accurate,” but that certainly appears to be the case with the Paul Krugman earthquake tweet that we linked to in the “Picks” section the other day: People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see »

Overnight on Fox News I saw a video clip of Obama in Fargo campaigning in 2008 against the fiscal irresponsibility of George Bush and intended to track it down this morning, but Glenn Reynolds and Ed Driscoll have saved me the trouble. Glenn comments: “Boy, the 2012 campaign ads just write themselves, don’t they?” But the video reminds us of a few things about Obama, each of which is obvious »

Today the Congressional Budget Office released its summer update on the budgetary outlook for the next decade. You can read the report in its entirety here, and Director Douglas Elmendorf’s commentary on the report here. The significance of the summer update lies largely in the fact that it takes into account the effects of the Budget Control Act–i.e., the debt ceiling compromise–that was adopted earlier this month. Reporting on the »

one more goddamned thing about his carbon footprint, but I don’t think he has updated his long-running series with the latest affront to rational sensibilities and good taste. I had heard, but not seen it reported, that President and Mrs. Obama took separate jets on the same day to Martha’s Vineyard for their current vacation. Thanks to the Daily Mail’s Tamara Abraham for capturing that poignant detail and more in »

Marco Rubio is one of the Republican Party’s brightest stars. Yesterday he spoke at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. You can watch his speech on YouTube here. An excerpt: [W]e must begin by embracing certain principles that are absolutely true. Number one – the free enterprise system does not create poverty. The free enterprise system does not leave people behind. People are poor and people are left »